


Tox City Runners

by yergothfriend (ineptdetective)



Series: Tox City [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Anxiety Disorder, Blood, Blood and Injury, Body Modification, Broken Bones, Corporate Espionage, Drugs, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eye Trauma, Gore, Graphic Descriptions of Injuries, Graphic injuries, Hand Injuries, Hand injury, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Organized Crime, Other, Panic Attacks, Piercings, Queer Characters, References to Addiction, References to Depression, Science Fiction, Stitches, Tattoos, Teeth, Violence, Vomiting, Whump, Whumptober 2020, anti-authoritarian, cyberpunk inspired, tooth injury, whumptober2020
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:34:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26607562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineptdetective/pseuds/yergothfriend
Summary: A crew of hapless, misfit criminals-for-hire navigate their way through the underground of a dystopian city.
Series: Tox City [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1935646





	1. Welcome to Tox City

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Not all chapters contain all of the tags)

The Western Property City of Tresser Inc sprawls across 4,000 square miles of concrete, steel, and pounded earth.  
It resembles not so much a city as it does a broken machine without a chassis-- stripped wires and cracked circuit boards swept together in a pile of hazardous waste. People in the Backbone call it Tox City for this reason. Only the rich call it Tresser.

For a tiny sliver of the population, there's opulence to be found, but it’s rarely visible to the naked eye. The delights and dignities of the Uppers take place behind closed doors, on streets with paywalls, in pristine mansions deftly hidden miles behind ugly, twisted, steel fences. They live their elegant lives literally in a bubble, with meticulously scrubbed oxygen pumped in through clean, plastic tubes, and glass canopies extended over sidewalks and freshly paved streets.

By contrast, the Backbone, where the bulk of the population makes their way, is a microcosm of the city itself: a chaotic, crowded, wild thing that winds its way along the feet of the giant chrome skyscrapers and elevated streets. It butts up against the Mids, and in some places, even the Uppers, but it exists in a parallel universe. The denizens of the Backbone are the poor, the exiled, and the misfits. Life here, the life that makes it, is raw, defiant, and hungry.

Some who dwell here hold the misguided hope that things could change. That someday they’ll be a part of the luxury class, living in a system that cares about them. Some are resigned to the life and just want to get by. Others run the streets, thriving on madness.


	2. Light Theft, Low Security

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johnny, Sawyer and Nine decide to take on a job with an old acquaintance. It sounds cut and dry, but nothing ever is.
> 
> Whumptober Prompts Used (4 prompts total for this chapter)
> 
> -No 7. I'VE GOT YOU  
> (Support)  
> -No 25. I THINK I’LL JUST COLLAPSE RIGHT HERE, THANKS  
> (Disorientation)  
> -No 12. I THINK I'VE BROKEN SOMETHING  
> (Broken trust)  
> -Alt 1. Punctured

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not all tags apply to all chapters, but please do read all of the tags for ongoing content and trigger warnings.
> 
> Trigger warnings and content warnings specific to this chapter: Drugs, needles, injections, vomiting

Johnny Ford has no illusions about making their way to a life in the Uppers. They don't waste their time dreaming. They prefer their life as it is. They grew up in the Backbone. They know things are hard here, but they also know they wouldn’t trade their integrity for hot water and a night at the Opera. Or whatever the fuck else the rich waste their time on.

They have no  _ hint  _ of guilt about running gigs with Sid's crew, no matter how many skulls they have to break to do it. Predictably, clients are mostly corporate hacks paying the crew to fuck over some other corporate hack. Let the rich eat each other. Johnny is happy to help them in their endeavor to do so, and to take home whatever silver they can get for the pleasure.

Johnny’s short stature might have taken them out of the running game if not for their proclivity for weapons, explosives, and distractions. What they lack in size, they make up for in pure tenacity and accuracy. You don’t need strength if you can blow something up.

Besides, their height is deceptive. They’re built thick, stocky, and muscular, and they can take care of themselves in a tussle if they need to.

Fully leaning into their role as a distraction, they cut a loud character in their sense of style. They keep their tightly curled hair short and neon orange. The color burns and glows against their dark umber skin. Their soft oval face is covered in silver piercings, from their perfectly coiffed full eyebrows to the nostrils and septum of their broad, slightly upturned nose. They compliment it with a wild assortment of odd clothing combinations in an array of colors and wear neon purple lipstick on their full, round lips. They think of the bright colors and abundance of body modifications as a warning to the world:  _ I’m dangerous.  _

Sid, a habitually utilitarian dresser, used to tease them about it. “God, your hair is so loud they’ll hear us coming a mile away.” But Johnny knows they bring a certain flair to the group that would otherwise be missing. Besides, Nine, with his wardrobe of moth-eaten black t-shirts and black jeans is always there to balance the scales.

The crew hasn’t really seen Sid in almost a year. Not since the last job went south and they all had to scatter for a while. Since then it seems like he’s doing his own thing. It’s a shame, since he was always the core, the one who chose the jobs and planned and delegated. Without him, the crew is a bit of an unorganized mess.

Sawyer, Johnny, Clay, and Nine find their jobs through various sources these days, none of which are particularly big or lucrative. As a result, they all have their own gigs on the side. 

Johnny fixes and soups up cars and bikes these days. Nine and Clay both fight for sport and the entertainment of rich idiots who want a taste of blood without risk to their own hides. Clay is much more successful, having even made it to the broadcast network fight dramas. Nine isn’t the right kind of beautiful to be a hero, not the right kind of ugly to be a heel, and not the right body type to draw a crowd, but he gets by fine on the underground circuit and sells illegal network rigs on the side. Sawyer models and races motorbikes.

It’s all enough to get by, but it isn’t the same.

Tonight, however, Johnny, Sawyer, and Nine actually have an honest-to-goodness hack n’ grab with Oakley, an old associate of theirs from way back when. It’s nothing special, but it'll help pay the bills.

Johnny checks the cartridges on the smallest of their homemade hand cannons. The batteries are leaking a bit of acid so they scrape it off with a chrome-plated fingernail and adhere some pliable repair putty. They need better materials and new fuel cells. This job oughta cover that.

They know Nine always gets in his head before these things, and they want to make sure he’s not gonna come in sideways and get himself killed over a small thing like this. Lately he’s been even more reckless than usual, agreeing to fights with dubious safety nets in divey clubs with no medics on staff. The two of them have been friends since childhood, and they’ve seen Nine in this place before. He always pulls it together for the team, but Johnny decides to get on the vid and give him a call for a pre-game pep talk.

*

Ignacio “Nine” Morales has the clamshell screen sitting on a stool by the sink while he brushes his teeth. Onscreen is Johnny, the crackling static of a poor connection coming over them in waves, white lines moving from the top of the frosted plastic screen to the bottom, making a soft pop or a gentle buzz every few seconds. The connection is stolen, which is about the only way you can get the network in the Backbone, so it’s unstable and unreliable.

Johnny, ever the talker, is rambling on about details for the job that they’ve all gone over a million times before. They almost never stop talking. Nine puts on his best look of engagement and smiles, inserts an “Oh,” or a “yep,” so they know he’s interested. He knows what they’re doing. They can read him like a book even though he keeps up a pretty good facade.

“Anyway,” they say, “I’ll see you at the rendezvous in an hour? You gonna be ready?”

He spits in the sink and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yeah. I’m good. I’ve got the rig ready to go.”

No one rigs and runs mechs like Nine. From the garbage he collects, he can put together a security battering-ram, a code breaker, a network siphon, and can even help Johnny with weaponry. From the guts of ancient tech and discarded motors, he creates miracles. The machines themselves are hideous little patchwork things, as tangled and ugly as Tox City itself, but the inner workings are a thing of true beauty.

“I’m wondering if Clay would wanna come” Johnny asks, as if that would make Nine feel better.

He shakes his head. “This is some small-fry, fifth-tier corp shit, Johnny. Light IP theft, low security. Shouldn’t take more than an hour. We don’t need a heavy for this.”

Johnny leans in so that their face takes up the entire screen. Their sparkling brown eyes peer straight into his. “Just cuz it’s a dash doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be on your guard.”

“I know,” he says, trying not to get irritable. Usually he won’t allow anyone to hover over him like this, but Johnny is better than a sibling to him. He feels more connected to them than to his biological brother. “Thanks, Johnny. I’ll see you in a minute.”

They give him a thumbs up before clicking off.

The sun dips down slowly through the muddy brown sky, bringing all the reds in the air with it as it finally gives up and hides behind the smog-crusted skyline.

Nine walks over and leans his forehead against the thick plexiglass to look outside. Clay asked him once why he had sprung for the window. It ticked up his rent by ten percent a month to be on the outside rim of the building, and the plex is clouded, scratched and filthy.

He doesn’t have a good answer to give him. At least not one he’d understand. There’s a lot about Tox City that’s truly hideous. But Nine was always that kid that collected bugs and spiders and snakes. The kid that wanted the mangy, one-eyed cat from the gutter. 

When Nine looks out the window, at the buildings that are so caked in pollution that they all have a grey or black hue, at the dull glass facades and cracked streets, tent cities and rooftop squatter settlements, he sees something all at once fascinating, horrifying, and beautiful.

He feels a kinship with Tox City. He grew up here, has never left. The bones and ashes of his losses are here. The fruits of his meager victories were all won here. And the chaos of anxiety, anger and guilt he carries every day is reflected in the jumble of ugly alleyways and abandoned buildings.

He goes back to the mirror, and runs his fingers through his jaw-length, thick, brown-black hair, and they catch on tangles and knots that he doesn’t bother to comb out. He slicks it all back with some wax to keep it out of his face, but a few strands fall around his left temple. His long face frames a sharp nose and equally sharp cheekbones. His eyes are large and almost black, with long lashes. There’s a stark, alien appeal to his face for those that choose to see it, but most don't.

He’s lean— most would say skinny— but his long bones are wrapped in tight, strong, sculpted muscles. He relies on speed and agility in the ring, and it’s gotten him this far. 

His russet-brown skin is adorned in black tattoos of various odd and terrifying creatures-- goblins, demons, and other invented horrors he drew himself. Across those are scars from years of misadventure and disregard for safety. A collection of souvenirs from both legal and illegal endeavors.

He dresses as he always does, head to toe in black, his arms bare in a tattered t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. He slips the rig into his bag, pulls on his worn steel-toed biker boots and heads out. It’s the last thing he remembers from the next 24 hours.

*

Sawyer Okasaki pulls up to the rendezvous location in a “borrowed” van. It’s perfect for the job, just a generic plastic-bodied number with minimal ornamentation. A completely plain car is conspicuous in Tox City, especially in the Backbone, but too much decor can draw attention too. Nine is the one with the artistic eye, so he’s temporarily decked it out in some off-the-shelf removable ornamentation. Just enough to pass as authentic.

Sawyer hates it. It’s a slow, reliable piece of shit that she can’t possibly push as hard as the sleek, exposed chrome Jetline she left at home. The Jetline is intricately engraved with Nine’s twisted designs. The engine runs loud and powerful, and she can overtake anyone. It’s the perfect place to feel free.

Of course she’s the first one on the scene. She sits in the car with the radio on and pulls her pink hair up into a bun, cinches her bolo tie a little tighter, and waits.

Her blazer is slung over the back seat, and her waistcoat is still buttoned up. Just because she’s gonna be sitting in the car all night doesn’t mean she has to dress down. She looks in the rearview and pushes her round, rimless glasses further up her delicate, slightly upturned nose. Her strong jaw, smooth cheeks, bow-shaped mouth and small, and small, wide-set eyes are all bereft of makeup, showing off the bumpy scar that runs from her upper lip on a diagonal to her left ear. The mark is almost white against her khaki skin. 

She’s a smart dresser and a handsome figure. As a model she’s in demand for her athletic, rectangular body, showing off tailored suits, sharp workwear, and couture masculine clothing. As a racer, she needs to be fit in order to manipulate the bike through breakneck curves and slingshot around other bikers.

Sawyer was born in the mids but ended up with nothing when her folks died. Turns out their entire net worth was owed back to Tresser, Inc over some debt that Sawyer and her brother Trace never knew they had. At least the house and the cars covered it, or Sawyer and Trace would be fucked now.

She’s been down here in the Canyon, deep in the Backbone for so many years it feels like the wires and rebar have grown into her skin.

The wait is about twenty minutes before Oakley shows up. She presses the switch for the door and it pops open.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says, not looking at her, just sliding into the passenger seat beside her.

“Well, you’re apparently early, according to whatever timezone Nine and Johnny are living in.”

He chuckles half-heartedly. He seems twitchy. Just what they fucking need. This whole job is  _ Oakley’s _ baby. He’s the one that’s been in touch with the client, he’s the one that approached the crew. If he’s not firing on all cylinders, how the hell are the rest of them supposed to get on board?

“You’re sure your intel is good?” Sawyer asks, not about to pull punches. “You seem off.”

He shakes his head, runs a hand through his hair and finally turns to face her. “Yeah. Yes,” he stammers out. “Sorry. I just… had a family thing. Um. My brother...” He trails off.

Sawyer doesn’t let things go, which is why she’s usually an intel gatherer in addition to being the best getaway driver in the city. “Your brother what.”

“Just got in a fight with him. That’s all. I promise I’m here, I won’t be distracted.”

Sawyer’s gut and basic observation skills tell her the story is bullshit, but it’s a little late to back out now. They all need the extra money, and she assumes the client isn’t going to love a last minute cancellation.

She studies Oakley. He’s scrawny, unkempt, and usually aloof. He’s almost as short as Johnny, but he’s much weaker physically. His pale skin is dotted with freckles and his wild red hair is all over the place. 

While he lacks the versatile combat skills of the crew, he’s a decent hacker. In jobs like these that require multiple approaches to breaking security, Oakley provides a second set of fingers and eyes when operating the gadgets that Nine designs. Usually Nine provides the hardware, and Oakley handles the software.

He’s not technically part of the crew, and he’s not really anyone’s favorite, but Nine calls him in every now and again when the tech seems sticky. And the tech always seems sticky when the physical security is low, like it is with this current job.

“Well get your shit together,” Sawyer tells him flatly.

Johnny and Nine show up not long after, nearly at the same time. Johnny’s got a rickety old blaster in their side holster. Nine’s carrying whatever little gizmo is gonna cut through the security equipment and bust into the server.

“Get in the car, assholes,” Sawyer calls out the open window. “We’re behind schedule.”

“Relax,” Johnny says, calm and confident as ever.

Nine looks apologetic, then seems to notice Oakley’s demeanor. “What’s up with  _ you _ ?” he asks, furrowing his brow.

Sawyer groans impatiently and answers for him. “He had a family thing, he’s fine, blah blah blah. Let’s go.”

*

As far as Johnny’s concerned, everything’s going fine at first. The warehouse security is extremely minimal, just like Oakley said, just like it looked when Johnny and Oakley cased it last week and the week before that.

Their first indication that something might be a bit off is the extended amount of time it takes Nine and Oakley to get into the first layer of gate security and vid system. Nine seems mildly irritated rather than worried, but that doesn’t exactly ease Johnny’s mind. They absently touch the butt of the gun as they watch the two techs type and adjust dials on the construct Nine made.

Once they’re finally through, Johnny hangs back, keeping watch at the gate while Nine and Oakley make their way through the shadows and industrial manufacturing equipment. Nine has the cartridge for collecting the payload.

Their crew specializes in onsite data and credit retrieval. Network-based remote hacking can’t reach the more sensitive assets and intellectual property that corporations squirrel away on local machines unconnected to the web.

Johnny watches them disappear into the darkness, and waits.

The street is quiet, the pavement slick with the humid slime of the heavy smog. There’s no moon tonight, but the street is fairly well lit by milky, aging streetlamps. It doesn’t matter though. Nine patched the vid system in a loop, so there’s no way for anyone to go back later and find out who was here. The guard in the control room is just looking at an empty street.

There’s one patrol guard, who they’ve already pegged as slow and disinterested. He’s smoking out back, right on schedule, and though he might swing by in a bit, Nine, Oakley and Johnny are good enough at staying out of sight.

Not to mention these guards are minimally armed and are no real threat.

Sawyer’s parked less than a block away, probably listening to music and fidgeting.

Johnny checks their watch. Starts to get nervous.

Minutes creep by. The guard passes by near where Johnny is crouched, but sees nothing. He lumbers back toward the control room.

_ They’re taking way too long. _

Just when Johnny is about to go charging into the warehouse, Nine staggers out. Alone. He looks sort of drunk. One hand is clamped over the back of his neck, and he’s holding the rig in the other. He jogs toward Johnny, sort of zigging and zagging as he does.

He somehow makes it all the way to them without detection, and without falling on his face, then drops to his knees beside them, still clutching the machine. “What’s going on?” Johnny asks in a worried whisper. “Where’s Oakley?”

We gotta go,” Nine says in a wavering voice. “Now.”

Johnny stands up, not asking anymore questions, but when Nine tries to follow them, he struggles to find his footing, and falls on his side. Johnny gets under his arm and pulls him up. They may be half a foot shorter than him, but Nine’s light and is doing his best to help himself up, so the weight is distributed somewhat.

“Oakley… stabbed… me..?” Nine manages to say as they work their way to the car, but Johnny doesn’t see any blood. The further they go, the more Nine is dragging his feet, slowing them both down. 

Just before they reach the van, Nine pushes away from Johnny and falls on his hands and knees, retching violently. The construct clatters across the pavement and stops a couple feet away. He groans and doesn’t make a move to reach for it, or to get back up.

While he’s down, Johnny notices an angry, five-pronged injection mark on the back of his neck, leaking a viscous, neon green substance. They know immediately what it is.

By this time Sawyer is out of the car, sliding over the hood and running to get to them. “What the fuck is going on?”

“Oakley fucked us,” Johnny barks. “Dosed Nine with Rex, full tilt. Help me get him in the car.”

“Grab the rig,” Nine chokes out. “Don’t leave it.”

Sawyer scoops it up, then helps Johnny with Nine. The two of them each grab one of Nine’s arms and shove him into the back seat. Johnny crawls in next to him and Sawyer jumps back in the driver’s seat. “Jesus. Fuck. I don’t have any antidote, do you?”

Johnny is preemptively holding Nine down to the floor with their hands in case the drug kicks in sooner than expected. “No,” they reply miserably. “But Clay will. Get us to Clay’s.”

Nine is mumbling, his eyes wandering wildly, seeing nothing. He’s panting, beads of sweat forming on his face. Johnny touches the side of his face and feels his temperature rising.

“Fuck!” Sawyer swears, hitting the gas and gunning the weak engine.

“You gotta hurry, dude,” Johnny says, watching the green start to appear in the corners of Nine’s eyes. “We’ve got about ten minutes before he goes ballistic.”


	3. Antidote

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew engages in a knock-down drag out with one of their own.
> 
> Whumptober Prompts Used (6 prompts total):
> 
> -No 1. LET’S HANG OUT SOMETIME  
> Waking Up Restrained  
> -No 22. DO THESE TACOS TASTE FUNNY TO YOU?  
> Drugged  
> -Alt 9. Memory Loss  
> -No 29. I THINK I NEED A DOCTOR  
> Emergency Room  
> -No 23. WHAT’S A WHUMPEE GOTTA DO TO GET SOME SLEEP AROUND HERE?  
> Exhaustion  
> -No 11. PSYCH 101  
> Struggling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not all tags apply to all chapters, but please do read all of the tags for ongoing content and trigger warnings.
> 
> Trigger warnings and content warnings specific to this chapter: Drugs, needles, injections, hospital, blood (kind of), depression, seizure

Clay Collins is a monstrously large mass of exaggerated muscles, standing nearly seven feet tall. His face is pockmarked and hard with a scar running across his nose and cheeks from ear to ear where he’d had fight-ready shield implants put in. He keeps his platinum-bleached hair short out of convenience, and it adds to the severity of his look. Despite all this, his large, kind, blue eyes lend him a certain charm, and if you can get past the intimidating facade, you immediately see that he’s gentle at heart. 

He’s on the old side of the boxing circuit, but he’s good at what he does, and there are few fighters that even come close to his size. He’s often pitted against much smaller fighters, and told to hold back. It makes for a more dramatic fight, and fools the betting pool.

In the ring he’s Anvilhead, the evil monster from hell who comes to challenge the well-loved, brave hero. He’s the perfect foil for the young, new hotshots that the corps want to paint as underdog heroes, even though they’re all just selfish whelps who don’t deserve the limelight. 

Nine is always on his ass about it. “ _You’re_ the good guy, Clay, not those cookie cutter fucks out there. People should be rooting for you.”

It’s sweet, but Clay doesn’t have the looks to play a leading man, and will only ever be hired as a heel. Clay doesn’t mind. He isn’t looking for adoration. Let the uppers use him as a make-believe villain. He doesn’t need false praise from a fickle crowd of rubberneckers who only come to see blood anyway. He’ll keep showing up, taking the paycheck, small as it may be.

This afternoon’s match is a small one. Paired with an opponent nearly his size but of an inadequate amount of experience, Clay has to work to draw the fight out to an entertaining length. Only Clay can so deftly thread the needle of hanging back while still appearing to put in his full effort. He dances around the ring as if he’s a delicate, lithe ballet dancer, throwing punches to the sides and gut that stop short of knocking his opponent out of the boxing game for good. 

At the same time, he lets every few punches from his opponent land, exaggerating the pain of them, making it look like the younger man has the advantage. Until he clocks him in the side of the helmet and sends him sprawling.

While the audience is still booing and hissing at his victory, Clay cheerily collects his paycheck backstage. 

Heading home from the warehouse arena, even though his hands are now bare, he can still smell the wet-dog stench of the mech gloves he’d been wearing. Those things are used by every fighter that comes through The Abattoir Fight Club, as are the steel chest plates, helmets, and shin guards. None of the fighters can afford their own, even though the equipment is largely ornamental. Clay wonders if they ever get cleaned.

Abattoir is by far his least favorite place to fight, but he’s not one to turn down a paying gig. These fights take more out of him these days, and his body aches. He falls asleep the minute he hits the mattress.

The rhythmic clatter at the door wakes him up. The apartment is illuminated by the swampy green glow of the turret lights coming through the foggy plexiglass window. Yawning and sweeping the crust of a deep sleep from his eyes with his fingers, he opens the door.

Sawyer and Johnny are standing on either side of Nine, who hangs limp off their shoulders. He’s dripping sweat, his shirt soaked through, and his hair is so wet it looks like he got caught in the rain.

Before he can ask anything, Sawyer and Johnny push him back into the apartment, dragging Nine with them. Clay finally finds his footing and takes Nine from them himself. Clay is strong enough to move Nine alone, and lays Nine on the couch.

“He’s pumped full of Rex,” Sawyer explains. “Needs antidote _now._ ”

“Rex?” Clay asks, confused. “He’s allergic to Rex!”

“Yeah no shit, that’s why we’re here! Just fucking give him the antidote while I tie him up!” Johnny snaps.

“Duct tape’s in the kitchen,” Clay responds. He swipes his gym bag out from under the coffee table and dumps it upside down. There, in the debris among his hand wraps, mouthguard and various simple first aid items, is a sterile pre-filled syringe of Rex antidote.

But they’ve run out of time. Nine swings from nearly comatose to absolutely feral in less than a second. He’s up off the couch, running toward the door at full tilt.

The span of Clay’s shoulders is about as wide as Nine is tall. So his reaction is to catch up and just wrap his arms around Nine completely in a bear hug. He’s done it a million times before, to opponents twice Nine’s size. Nine is 135 pounds soaking wet, and Clay can lift him off the floor with one hand.

But he’s taken by surprise when Nine whips around throws himself at Clay, hitting him full force in the chest with his shoulder.

Clay staggers backward and nearly falls on his ass. The strength of the hit stuns him, and Clay’s brain can’t wrap around the idea of someone that small being able to cause such a big impact. It actually knocks the wind out of him.

Johnny has the tape in hand and vaults over the back of the couch, trying to jump into the back of Nine’s knees and sweep him off his feet. They make contact and Nine goes down.

Nine appears completely unphased by any of the unfolding events, and seems to feel nothing, despite a large gash in his eyebrow where his face hit the floor. He growls at them like an animal.

Sawyer runs over and puts both hands over Nine’s right shoulder, while Johnny pushes down on his left, both of them trying to hold him down. Nine is kicking, yelling, spitting, trying to bite.

Clay recovers from the shock of Nine’s attack and straddles Nine’s hips. He puts his knee down on Nine’s left forearm and nods at Johnny.

Johnny gets to work taping Nine’s wrists and ankles together.

Nine is struggling so valiantly, so persistently. Clay can see Nine’s pulse racing, every vein on his neck, arms, and hands visible and throbbing, drawing faintly glowing green tracks under his skin. The whites of his eyes are a toxic, neon green. Nine’s skin is hot to the touch with fever.

Even with the tape, and with all three of them holding him down, it’s difficult to contain him. It looks as though he might pull his own shoulders out of their sockets. Clay finds the syringe on the floor nearby, and manages to reach it.

Clay pushes down on Nine’s chest with his left hand, holds the syringe in his right, and rips open the wrapper with his teeth. As quickly as he can go without completely missing his mark, Clay feeds the needle into Nine’s most prominent vein and presses the plunger all the way down.

All three of them stay where they are while they wait for the antidote to take effect. Nine’s movements start to lose some of their power, but he’s not coming down as quickly as he should. 

The antidote dose Clay carries is for the small amounts of Rex that some fighters use in the more brutal afterhours fights. Every fighter carries the antidote, even those that never use Rex. It comes standard in an off-the-shelf fighter’s medkit.

But some people are, for lack of a better word, allergic to Rex. Instead of a mild and temporary increase in strength and speed, it causes a violent fugue, arrhythmia, seizures, and can result in cardiac arrest and death. Nine is one of these people. The one time he tried just a small amount for a fight, he exhibited all the signs of Rex intolerance. Three other fighters had to give him their antidote to get him to come down.

This time around, it seems worse. The amount in the injection must have been massive, or maybe it was laced, or a strong batch. Whatever the reason, the antidote clearly isn’t working. Nine chokes slightly, pausing only for a second before his body starts to convulse.

“Why isn’t it working?” Sawyer asks desperately. Johnny shields Nine’s head from slamming against the floor as Clay turns him on his side.

“He’s too far gone,” Clay says, his voice shaking. “We need to get him to a doc right fucking now.”

*

Nine wonders when the mattress got so hard. He stirs softly at first, then realizes he can’t remember getting in bed. He can’t remember what he ate last. He can’t remember…

Nine’s wide awake now, his animal instinct, the primitive corner of his brain, taking over completely. In the world of fight or flight, he’s a fight kind of fellow, and he’s thrashing from side to side, his hands and feet pulling against restraints he hasn’t even looked at yet. He doesn’t call out. Not yet. Not when his captor might hear him.

It takes him a few seconds to recognize the pain in his wrists and ankles, and it becomes so sharp and intrusive that he has to stop for a moment.

He takes a breath and starts to assess the situation. He dips his chin as much as possible toward his feet. The movement makes his head swim, and his eyes feel loose, the aftereffects of whatever tranquilizer he’s been dosed with. There’s a throbbing headache at his temples, affecting the edges of his vision, a migraine threatening him behind his eyes.

Through the haze of drugs and pain, the dark tunnel of his vision, he tries to make sense of his surroundings. The restraints are black neoprene-padded cuffs held in place with wide bands of industrial strength velcro, done up as tight as they can go without completely cutting off his circulation.

A rainbow of overlapping bruises covers his arms, barely an inch of skin unscathed. He’s cuffed at his ankles and wrists, and the skin around them is particularly brutalized, the skin broken in places, the rest turning all sorts of unsightly shades of purple, green, and yellow, with the bright red freckles of burst blood vessels.

An IV line terminates into his left hand, traced back to a forked tube that feeds from two different bags. His shirt is gone, and there are circular heart monitor patches stuck to his chest. He’s still wearing his tight black jeans.

He turns his head left and right, gathering more information. He’s in a stall, walled off with opaque plexiglass dividers on the left and right, and a faded curtain separates the foot of his bed from the outside. The stall has space for his bed, the IV pole, a tiny steel sink that looks like it was borrowed from the last century, and a stool. The walls are bare and oppressive. A decades-old vid player sits on a dilapidated side table. Though everything looks clean, and there’s a sharp sterile smell in the air, all of the equipment is old and out of date.

He’s not in a hospital, and he knows that for two reasons. The first is that he knows hospitals have got to look nicer than this, and the second is that there’s not a single person he knows who can afford to even set foot through the doors of one. He’s also been in enough chop doc recovery rooms to know one when he sees it. These back alley emergency clinics are usually only frequented by clients of the criminal persuasion.

This one seems nicer than some of the others he’s been to. Must be something in the middling price range.

As far as he can tell, he’s not injured in such a way that would merit him being here. He’s clearly not mortally wounded.

He can’t lie here any longer.

“I’m awake in here,” he projects, trying to keep his voice even, loud, and unemotional. He finds that he’s incredibly hoarse, and his throat feels raw. There’s no response. He bites his lip, trying to decide how long he can wait before he has a panic attack and starts screaming.

The second time he says it, he’s yelling. “I’m fucking awake in here!” He doesn’t think he has the physical ability to fight against the restraints anymore, but he’s not sure he can stop himself from trying.

A door somewhere on the other side of the curtain squeaks open and footsteps get nearer, until a hand lazily pulls back the curtain to reveal the doc, known in this clandestine setting as a chopper. Nine knows of this particular chopper by local reputation. It’s Gill Glass.

Gill is a 50-something man with slicked back salt and pepper hair, and he has an old fashioned ruggedness, almost handsome, but it’s tempered by his sour demeanor. He stands in the doorway now, an unlit cigarette stuck to his bottom lip, looking bored out of his mind.

A moment later, Clay appears behind him, his face pinched with worry.

"What are _you_ doing here?” Nine asks untactfully. “What did I do?”

“Oakley drugged you with Rex and left you to die,” Clay answers bluntly. “Sawyer and Johnny brought you to my place. I barely had enough antidote to get you here.”

“ _What?_ ”

Clay recounts what happened.

“Are Johnny and Sawyer okay?”

Clay nods. “They’re fine. They got you to me fast. I cannot believe we got you here before you flatlined.”

“I don’t remember anything,” Nine groans. “I don’t even remember getting to the job or meeting up with anyone.”

“Not surprised, state you were in,” Gill grumbles. “Had to pump you full of my whole supply of antidote and flush your system with Scrub, handful of other drugs.”

“I fucking _knew_ Oakley was scum,” Clay says.

“You didn’t know shit, Clay,” Nine replies. His voice is gentle, even if the content isn’t.

Clay takes a deep breath. “Fine. Fine. I didn’t know, okay? None of us saw this coming…”

Nine is quiet. He’s always suspected that the day would come when Oakley would fuck over a crew. He just never thought it would be _his_ crew.

“I’m gonna need you to free up the bed,” Gill interjects, carefully removing Nine’s IV and taping a cotton ball over the wound. He looks at his watch, “It’s almost rush hour.”

“Come on Gill, give us a minute,” Clay requests.

Gill ignores Clay and turns his attention to Nine as he unfastens the restraints. “You’re gonna feel like hell for a couple days— headaches, the shakes, nausea, anxiety, trouble sleeping or maybe sleeping too much, poor short term memory, bouts of vertigo,” he rattles off with disinterest. After undoing the last strap, he pulls Nine up off the bed and pats his shoulder. 

"Thank you for your business. Now get the fuck out."

As they leave the clinic, which is really just the back-of-house for an all night laundromat, Nine finds that he is leaning nearly all of his weight on Clay. Chemicals are still duking it out in his system, and his whole body is shaking. He feels desperately tired, and his muscles feel like they’re pumped full of battery acid.

He thinks he might pass out, puke, or both.

Clay notices, and slows down. "Let's take a break," he says softly, and helps Nine sit down in one of the blue plastic bucket chairs. Above them, the fly-buzz and sour-milk glow of mismatched fluorescent light creeps into their ears and slides behind their eyes.

Besides the two of them, there’s only one other person in the room-- an older, shriveled, hunched over figure sitting near the detergent dispenser. They’re hyper-fixated on the pages of a coverless, disintegrating paperback. The place is a ghost town, but somehow almost every dryer and washer is chugging along unattended.

Outside it’s night again, or early morning.

"Clay," Nine says shakily. "I'm sorry. And thanks."

Clay shakes his head. He’s still wearing the sweats and hoodie that Nine saw in the surveillance footage. He must have been up this entire time. “What’re you sorry for?” he asks, incredulous. “You got attacked. Someone tried to kill you. What the _fuck_ are you sorry for?”

Nine shrugs. _Maybe I asked for it. Maybe I wanted something like this to happen, and I’m sorry that I woke up._

Clay looks at him in disbelief, not even sure where else to go. Nine knows what he’s thinking. He knows Clay is going back through all of Nine’s depressive episodes and that he’s as tired of it as Nine is. “I’m worried about you, Nine.”

Clay’s response sparks anger in Nine. He always feels a touch of resentment for Clay in these situations. Nine hates sympathy, hates feeling like he can’t take care of himself. “Don’t be.” _I don’t deserve it._

Taking the job with Oakley was his idea. He did this. His carelessness jeopardized the whole team. He should have just taken the job himself, left everyone out of it, but they seemed so eager for work.

For years now he’s been on a downward trajectory of throwing himself around with abandon, subconsciously hoping something will happen to him. He never expected to be around at this age, doing this shit for so long. He just wants to fade into the blackened pipes, slick streets, and flickering neon of Tox City and disappear. He’s always angry or unspeakably sad. He’s tired.

The only reason he doesn’t take himself out of the equation is because of the crew. He feels sort of bitter at them for keeping him alive, but he also fears hurting them. As much as he can’t understand it, they care about him, and leaving them would be a way of injuring them deeply.

Usually he succeeds at pushing these thoughts to the side, but he hasn’t been this physically drained in a while, and his defenses are down.

Nine closes his eyes, sliding down in the chair a bit. His head throbs, and it feels like knives are pressing against the back of his eyes. He shivers. It’s fucking cold and sad in here and he’s stitting there shirtless, barefoot, exhausted, and stressed the fuck out.

Clay looks over at him, then stands up and walks over to a churning dryer at random and opens the plastic door. He reaches in and rummages around, coming back out with a pale pink t-shirt and a hoodie, which he tosses to Nine. Nine catches the shirt, and the sweatshirt lands in his lap. “We took your boots off in the car… you were… kicking. Seemed like a good idea at the time but I left them in the back seat.”

“It’s fine,” Nine says, then pulls on the shirt clumsily, which is two sizes too small, skin-tight and comes down just above his belly button. He shrugs the hoodie on after it, which is two sizes too big.

“Sawyer and Johnny are getting the car,” Clay says, looking at the cracked face of his comm. “They should be here any minute.”

“I can’t believe you took me to Gill’s,” Nine says to Clay. “He’s not the cheapest chop in town. It’s gonna take me a year to pay you back.”

Clay shrugs. “Your heart was about to fucking explode in your chest. I couldn’t help you. Gill could,” Clay says in a tone that leaves no room for argument.

Nine knows that Clay has no intention of letting Nine pay him back. It only adds to Nine’s fury, leaving him feeling infantilized and patronized.

Sawyer steps through the door a minute later. “Let’s go, shitheads,” she says brightly.

Johnny’s beside her. “Dial it down,” they say quietly to Sawyer.

Clay helps Nine get up out of the chair, and it looks like Nine is about to fall asleep on his feet. “Guys,” he says earnestly, “thanks.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Sawyer says. “You were a god-damned wild animal last night. Took all three of us to get you into the car. It was fucken _nuts_ , real top shelf entertainment. Best time I’ve had in a minute.”

“Take it easy on the wisecracks,” Johnny interjects. “He’s had a long night. We all have.”

Sawyer puts her hand up in mock surrender and leads the way back to the car. 

Nine closes his eyes as he slides into the back seat, not taking the hand that Clay offers to help him sit down. He can’t take anymore fussing, and his anger’s not subsiding. It’s unfair, but the feeling floods his mind without his permission. “I’ve got it,'' he snaps irritably.

Sawyer flips the ignition in silence, and after the night they’ve had, they’re all quiet for several blocks. Nine rolls the window down, even though it’s freezing outside. The sharp air feels good, and helps him wake up.

“Something was off about that job was off from the moment we stepped out of the van,” Johnny remarks.

“Oh yeah, Oakley was acting sketchy as shit,” Sawyer admits unapologetically, “but what were we gonna do? Go back to the client and say, ‘Sorry, we decided to bail cuz our idiot friend was acting kind of nervous’?”

A thought pops into Nine’s head. “Where’s the rig?” he asks nervously.

Johnny fishes around under the seat and comes back up with it, handing it to him. It’s cracked, scratched, and dented, and wires are exposed like viscera. “You dropped it,” they explain with a bit of a grimace, “but you were adamant that we bring it along. I assume to eliminate evidence?”

He takes the device into his hands and sort of cradles it as if it’s a dying pet. It’s weird hearing his actions relayed back to him without being able to remember them. It feels like he’s been split into two people: the one that’s sitting in the car right now, and the one who only existed for a day and walked around without his permission.

Nine doesn’t ask about the device with the payload. Everyone knows that’s in the wind with Oakley.

“It’s not just evidence,” he says. “If I can get back into it, I might be able to put together what happened.”

“It keeps a history?” Sawyer asks.

She has never really expressed much interest in Nine’s toys, but he knows she’s never really been double crossed out of her hard earned cash before. They’ve all failed jobs before, but not because of inside betrayal.

“In a way. I should be able to see what processes it ran and what it came up against,” he explains. “I have a hunch the client wasn’t who Oakley said they were, and I doubt the target was either.”

He falls asleep mere seconds after speaking, clutching the construct to his chest.


End file.
